All 5,000 artefacts in King Tut’s tomb to be displayed for the first time

Set to open in 2018, the Grand Egyptian Museum will feature all of the young king’s buried belongings

The food, clothes and jars of beer found in King Tut's tomb will be on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum. Photo: Larry Lilac / Alamy Stock Photo

If you really want to understand ancient Egyptians and their afterlife actions, there’s a new spot to add to your bucket list. Just over a mile from the iconic pyramid of Giza sits the Grand Egyptian Museum, a still-under-construction attraction which will soon house more than 50,000 ancient Egyptian artifacts, according to Smithsonian magazine. Of those 50,000 objects, from a to-scale replica of King Amenhotep III to masks from older, royal tombs, 5,000 will be from King Tutankhamun’s (best known to most of us as King Tut) tomb alone.

Some 30,000 of the artifacts to be on display at the new museum have never been seen by the public before, including many of King Tut’s garments, which are incredibly fragile and risky to display. The tomb, which was first discovered in 1922, will be nearly recreated in the space, giving visitors a first-hand look into the life and death of the Golden King.

“The objects in the [original] tomb were in four rooms, and they will be on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum in two oblong galleries with an area of 7,000sqm,” Dr Tarek Sayed Tawfik, the museum’s general director, told Smithsonian. “[Then] it came to me! I have a virtual line cutting these two long galleries, and then I have four spaces representing the four rooms. If we just put the objects as they were inside the tomb, in the same order, then we will have … the funerary complex of the king.”

The museum will make up 117 acres of land and will bring a third of its artefacts in from the Egyptian Museum, which sits near the Nile Ritz-Carlton and Tahrir Square. As of now, the museum is expected to open in early 2018, after extensive political and financial delays. The tomb was originally unearthed in 1922, and another exciting discovery came in 2016 when a new high-tech radar scan indicated there were two additional chambers beyond King Tut’s, including one that may have belonged to Queen Nefertiti.

“Hopefully, at the beginning of 2018, we’ll be able to welcome guests from all over the world, but mainly the Egyptians, because we want the new Egyptian generations to [have] pride in their ancient culture,” Tawfik said. “This will be … the means for them in the future to protect their heritage.”

Now Playing: 17 Of The Most Beautiful Towns In America

The next time you fly west, be sure to carry this list with you. Quaint, charming and starkly different from its big city version, small town US is best explored via road trips to enjoy the sights and sounds at a slower pace.